Writing and Reading
Trollope had a huge capacity for work, writing and reading.
I do not think it probable that my name will remain among those who in the next century will be known as the writers of English prose fiction.
An Autobiography
Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.
An Autobiography
There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.
Barchester Towers
He had surrounded himself with his papers, had gotten his books together and read up his old notes, had planned chapters ... revelled in those paraphernalia of work which are so dear to would-be working men; and then nothing had come of it.
Ralph The Heir
Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away also from England her authors.
An Autobiography
A pleasant letter I hold to be the pleasantest thing that this world has to give. It should be good-humoured; witty it may be, but with a gentle diluted wit. Concocted brilliancy will spoil it altogether. Not long so that it be tedious in the reading; nor brief, so that the delight suffice not to make itself felt.
The Bertrams
Editors of newspapers are self-willed, arrogant, and stiff-necked, a race of men who believe much in themselves and little in anything else, with no feelings of reverence or respect for matters which are august enough to other men.
Phineas Redux
The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.
An Autobiography
If a man have not acquired the habit of reading till he be old, he shall sooner in his old age learn to make shoes than learn the adequate use of a book.
The Claverings
I regard the literature of a country as its highest produce, believing it to be more powerful in its general effect, and more beneficial in its results, than either statesmanship, professional ability, religious teaching, or commerce ... Literature is the child of leisure and wealth.
North America
That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man.
An Autobiography
A small daily task, if it really be daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.
An Autobiography
The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.
Barchester Towers
Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well.
Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography
She did like reading, and especially the reading of poetry, though even in this she was false and pretentious, skipping, pretending to have read, lying about books, and making up her market of literature for outside admiration at the easiest possible cost of trouble.
The Eustace Diamonds
In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.
Can You Forgive Her?
... it would be rank theft, a theft almost as heinous as that of the Eustace Diamonds, if that reader were to be deprived of one jot or tittle of the pleasure and surprise which are in store for him if he choose to follow the fate of the famous necklace through these pages.
The Times, 30th October 1872
He is at the top of the tree; he stands alone; there is nobody to be compared with him. He writes faster than we can read, and the more that the pensive public reads the more it desires to read. Mr Anthony Trollope is, in fact, the most fertile, the most popular, the most successful author - that is to say, of the circulating library sort.
E.S.Dallas, The Times, 23 May 1859
... ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned quartos fail to do so.
The Warden